Philosophy and medicine have a very long shared history. It is therefore not surprising that a number of the brain’s functions were discovered (and are still occasionally anticipated) by philosophers. Similar insights have also been described by a variety of artists, such as Whitman, Proust, and Cezanne. Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin was a jurist in the age of Enlightenment who, quite surprisingly, made fundamental observations on chemoreception. This paper is dedicated to his discoveries.